Digital 2014: Middle East, North Africa & Turkey Regional Overview
Continuing our series of reports on the social, digital and mobile landscapes of hundreds of countries around the world, today we're very pleased to share a report on the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey.
Global update
As always, let’s begin with a quick update on the latest global figures:
Internet use in the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey
As in so many other areas of life, internet usage in the Middle East is a story of variety. There's a huge disparity in terms of access, from almost complete penetration in Kuwait to barely 8% in Iraq:
Interestingly, however, the role of mobile access is still very low in the Middle East, especially when compared to the numbers we saw in last week's India report:
Given the high rate of internet penetration in Kuwait, as well as that country's relatively higher adoption rate of mobile internet, we believe that mobile devices will be the key driver of improved internet access throughout the region in coming months, and we'd expect overall numbers to increase significantly in the near future.
Social media
Social media continues to grow in the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, with many countries showing strong penetration figures:
However, despite Facebook's dominance in terms of user numbers around the region, it remains blocked in Iran.
Meanwhile, Facebook does not release user figures for Syria, although recent evidence suggests that it's still a powerful platform within the country.
Mobile is a key component of social media usage in the region, with many countries seeing impressive figures for access on the go:
Mobile
Despite the lower-than-expected numbers for mobile internet adoption, mobile usage in the region is strong and growing, with most countries exceeding the global average:
However, 3G access remains elusive even in the most developed nations, and the vast majority of the region's population continues to rely on lower-speed connections:
Individual country details
You'll find complete data for 20 of the region's key economies in our full report:
You’ll find all the latest data for those 20 countries in embed of the full report at the top of this article, but here are the slides for Turkey to whet your appetite:
Click here to download a free PDF of the complete report (you may need to sign in to SlideShare first). You can also find our complete series of reports on the countries featured in this report by clicking the links below:
This article first appeared on the We Are Social blog.